


Between Breaths

by Alannaa



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 13:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13502286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alannaa/pseuds/Alannaa
Summary: Why is he trying to kill Mike?Where's Josh?“WHERE IS HE?!”Hands and arms grab at him,yank, whole torsos get in between them, muffled voices shout. Mostly their names and “stop.” Chris almost doesn't care, almost starts punching everyone else to get to Mike, fucking-fuck,he wants to tear his head off.





	Between Breaths

They meet back at the lodge, converging and swarming up from the tunnels into the basement, back into the belly of the building. There are monsters at their back, right on their coattails, and Chris is giddy and mindless with fear.

_Go! Get to safety,_ his brain shrieks at him. _Hide,_ it pleads with sobbed and ragged desperation. And anyone who stumbles or falters in front of him gets dragged and pushed along. He doesn't let them stop, just hauls them upright, carries them down the passages and across the threshold--across--into safety!

Flash of red-- door slams. He glances over his shoulder as he’s turning into the main basement, and sees Sam by the door to the mines, like she’s checking it’s sturdy.

No time to verify. “Sam! Come on!” he urges in a hush. The old man never got around to telling him if the wendigo were actually deaf.

He hauls--oh, it’s Jessica--up more and rushes on, and Mike swoops in eventually to get her other side. The action both annoys and relieves Chris, because she’s slowing him way down, like she’s having trouble walking. He glances over and catches sight of her hazy eyes and bloodied face in a patch of stray moonlight, and, yes, she’s really fucked up. He’s about to ask about it when they come into the main room of the lodge, and hear a shriek coming from in front rather than behind.

Chris watches, surprised, as Mike eases his girlfriend off his shoulder, meets his eyes, and takes a slow step forward. Like the dumbass is gonna fight the _cannibalistic fucking monster_ and is trusting Chris to keep an eye on her. A tiny corner of his brain starts grumbling about how everyone else gets to look heroic and get the girl while he’s stuck in the role of sidekick. Or getting bullshit ultimatums.

Chris doesn’t even have to see the wendigo to know when it arrives, because everyone else flinches and goes still. Except Jessica, who’s sagging against Chris and growing heavier by the second. Matt reaches out to steady her, and then he’s- fuck, he’s m _oving what the fuck are you thinking_ \- stepping under her arm and propping her up again.

Chris doesn’t even breathe, his heart is so far up his throat he can taste it on his tongue. But when he glances around from the corner of his eye, he realizes there are more of them, coming from the other side of the stairs leading down to the basement. They’re crawling and jumping across the banister and zeroed in on the first wendigo which Chris checks is still literally perched on the fucking chandelier like it owns it. And it’s glaring right back at them. And he and his friends are right in the middle of this bullshit.

His ears ring from all the shrieking when whatever stalemate is happening finally breaks and they all converge on each other like it’s Jurassic Park. In the chaos, several of the bystanders, Chris included, ease their way around the room. He’s so lost in the fear and concentrating so hard on sneaking out with Jess and Matt that Chris only barely registers Mike and Sam helping to distract the wendigos. And then he’s out the door and dragging anyone nearby into the trees and trying to count.

Jess--one--collapses against Matt--two--who sinks to the ground, trying not to drop her too fast. Ashley--three--limps around a tree and sags against it, looking exhausted and shocky. Emily--four--is just noticing what Matt is up to and alternating between panting and glaring at him. Mike--five--comes running out of the lodge, pale as a fucking sheet, and almost runs right past them before Emily snags him by the arm. Sam still hasn’t come out yet, and Chris is already casting around for a weapon when she leaps through the front door-

And an explosion carries her all the way across the porch into the snow and knocks everyone else back on their asses.

Dazed, ears ringing, eyes watering, and skin stinging with the sudden heat, Chris struggles upright. He can’t fucking breathe, all the air just gone, and he can’t get any no matter how hard he tries. But Sam is worse. He rolls onto his knees and crawls to her. Her eyes are fucked up, both dazed and heavily-lidded like she’s gonna pass out. She’s smiling, too, all calmly like the world isn’t on fire right in front of them.

Part of him is terrified that one of those things is about to descend upon them, but...the explosion honestly feels like an end. And when he looks at the house, it’s completely engulfed. The wendigo are probably all huddling as far away from the flames as they can, so odds are that it will collapse around them before they try to flee. Yeah, it's probably over. Sun’s even coming up.

“Sam,” he says. Probably shouts, actually. He doesn't know. Volume control is fucked right now. She doesn’t respond so he grabs at her, snaps his fingers, shakes her. He even holds his hand up to her mouth to check her breathing because all she does is blink for a good solid minute. He looks around and everyone else are only just sitting up.

Okay, so maybe it isn't actually a whole minute and he’s hopped up on adrenaline.

He tries again, talking loudly and only hearing a vague drone to match it, but she starts coming around and when she pushes to sit up, he helps her. Ashley’s nose is gushing but she seems more awake and functional than the rest of them when she comes crawling over to prop Sam up. Maybe the tree helped.

Chris is having trouble balancing on his feet so he crawls around, exaggeratedly mouthing and gesturing “are you okay?” at everyone. Emily and Mike seem okay, try to talk back and getting obviously frustrated. He lets them try to shout each other back into hearing and checks on Matt and Jess. The former just nods and frowns at the latter who is scarily-pale and out cold. Chris doesn't know what to do so he just takes off a couple of his jackets and covers her up, lets Matt (and eventually Mike) try to wrap her up.

He looks around to see how Josh is doing, but can’t find him, even with the rising sun casting extra light on the area. Panicked, he staggers to his feet and starts to yell. He didn’t see Josh come out, didn’t see him in the tunnels or when they met up in the lodge. Maybe he just didn’t notice him? He wanders a little away from the group, checks in the trees a little to see if Josh was just hanging out out of sight. But when he starts getting about thirty feet away it starts seeming unlikely that Josh got thrown this far, or would even be as fucked up if he got this far away before the blast. If he was here, Josh would hear Chris yelling for him. Even Chris can hear himself a bit now.

Unless Josh was hiding from him, but that doesn’t sound like his best friend.

There's a presence at his side, Mike, and Chris remembers he and Sam went to find Josh, so he’s gotta ask.

It comes out colder, and angrier, and more accusing than he expected, but maybe that’s from his ears. “Where's Josh?”

Mike’s confused and worried frown turns into a guilty one and Chris can’t even help himself. He throws a punch, just so angry he doesn't dare care to modulate it, to not beat the fuck out of his friend. But Mike’s more active than he is, and reaches out faster than Chris expected him to recover and tries to grab his fists, calm him down. So Chris knees him, high enough to get him in the stomach, but hard enough to drop him, and falls on top of him, already throwing one punch and scrabbling at him with the other hand.

“What the fuck happened?!” He all but shrieks, angrier than he really understands why. “What the fuck did you do, you piece of shit?!”

Why is he trying to kill Mike?

_Where's Josh?_

“WHERE IS HE?!”

Hands and arms grab at him, _yank_ , whole torsos get in between them, muffled voices shout. Mostly their names and “stop.” Chris almost doesn't care, almost starts punching everyone else to get to Mike, fucking- _fuck_ , he wants to tear his head off.

And then he recognizes who’s holding him back and just. Deflates.

“Josh?” He looks scared, and shell-shocked, his eyes glassy and huge. One of his arms is wrapped around Chris’ chest while the other hand grips his shoulder, and now that Chris has stopped pulling and tugging, he relaxes, sinks in on himself. Josh’s eyes drop almost self-consciously and he swallows very audibly.

“Hey, man.”

Chris kinda stares for a minute, watches the way Josh fidgets, first with his expressions, then his body, and then he’s pulling away, hand already making a path for his head.

Chris doesn't let him get far. He sort of does a half-belly flop and lands more or less on top of his best friend, dragging him into a hug he’s sure is too tight.

“Thank god you’re okay,” he whispers, doesn’t think anyone heard him, Josh included. Which is fine because his throat is definitely closing up and his voice shakes as he says it.

Josh doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, they so rarely hug like this. He just sort of puts them on Chris’ back and rubs, like Chris is the one who needs it. (And he kinda does, but Josh being alright after everything is pretty much handling that problem for him.) Chris is shaking so hard he hardly notices that Josh is, too. It is really fucking cold with the sun barely coming up. And denim overalls don't do shit for that.

He starts to pull away so he can give Josh his pullover, but Josh grabs hold tighter, and Chris finally registers the wetness on his neck, where Josh’s face is pressed, how his shoulders hitch, and the very muffled huffs and gasps reaching his ears.

Josh is crying, and based on the others’ faces, he’s not exactly hiding it. Fuck. Shitfuck.

Chris hauls him in and fully wraps himself around his friend, trying to minimize the cold for him and maximize comfort. And honestly? Fuck anyone who has a problem with it. He’s just so fucking happy they all made it out. He can apologize...he can-

“I'm sorry.” Chris blurts out, startled into it. He keeps going uncertainly for a bit, until he realizes he doesn't want to go without getting it all out, in case something else happened. “For not believing you. And tying you up. And letting Mike do that shit to you. I mean, obviously you had no idea what the fuck we were talking about. And I just _left_ you there- _Je_ sus fuck, dude, you almost _died_!”

Chris has to stop letting himself think about it because any minute he's going to fucking lose it.

Luckily (ha!) for him, Josh starts-fuck, he starts whimpering and shaking his head and Chris catches him mumbling “...not real...didn't mean it” and it abruptly stops feeling like victory. Chris stops revelling in being alive. Because Hannah and Beth aren't. And his best friend is really fucked up.

He doesn't get to say anything about it, because a buffeting wall of wind alerts him to the helicopter landing nearby.

Hours later, after getting herded into two different rescue choppers and flown to a hospital- after hours of medical treatment, and getting debriefed by a whole slew of people who don’t believe them- after Chris refuses to let Josh out of his sight and meets Mike’s attempted jokes about how it took a life or death situation for them to “finally get your shit straight” with the meanest look he can manage and stony silence, he pulls the latter aside, first to find out what happened down in the mines. Finds out how Mike and Sam found Josh, about Sam splitting off, Hannah ambushing them and how he and Josh had to run to escape. It's not enough, but at least Mike didn't literally leave him to die.

Chris takes Josh into an exam room and asks him what he thought he saw. It’s intense and Josh spends more time insisting none of it was real than actually describing anything, so finally Chris has to stop him and tell him that it's okay. They’ll talk about it later, maybe. If he can convince Josh to trust him. He hopes he can earn that trust back.

After all, Chris is the one who left Josh to feel lonely and desperate enough to pull his stunt. It's obvious who’s at fault for everything that happened on the mountain, and it’s not Josh.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally never intended to be here but I promised my friend an accessible version so its been crossposted from Tumblr. Very much a pre-relationship climbing class fic from Chris" pov. Hope you like it.


End file.
